Monday, August 30, 2010

Title: Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side of a street.

10.75 inches by 7.25 inchesink and marker on found paperAugust 29, 2010

Title: This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay out his full term below.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Title: One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this: — He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head...

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Title: In most land animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it is, to have an entire nonvalvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system...

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Title: As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!

Friday, August 13, 2010

Title: But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three tigers — Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo — instinctively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons entered the whale.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Title: At this juncture, the Pequod's keel had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals.

7.75 inches by 10.75 inchesacrylic paint and ink on found paperAugust 8, 2010

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Title: Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity.

10.75 inches by 7.75 inchesacrylic paint and ink on found paperAugust 8, 2010

Title: For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.

7.25 inches by 10.75 inchesacrylic paint and charcoal on found paperAugust 6, 2010

Thursday, August 5, 2010

(Again, I finished this late last night, scanned it, posted it, and then went to sleep with a mildly swelling itching brain. As I lay in bed trying to get some sleep, an entirely new illustration for this line of text - one that better connects the whale and phrenology - slowly swam to the surface of my consciousness. It was much too late at night for me to start work on it, but I am going to finish it today, scan it, and post it later tonight. I'll also be posting the next illustration for page 335. I'm truly not certain why there has been such an abundance of visions lately. In general, it's a very good thing but I am going to be working harder to clarify my ideas for each piece so that I can continue to progress through the novel rather than make 2 or 3 illustrations for each page. I'll save some of these ideas for the second time I make an illustration for every page of Moby-Dick a few years from now. Ha!)

Title: To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken.

7.75 inches by 10.75 inchesink and marker on found paperAugust 4, 2010

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Title: Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Title: But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a boarding-sword in its hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Title: ...but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up — my God! poor Tashtego — like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!